2023 has not been a kind year for DC at the box office. Shazam! Fury of the Gods underperformed significantly. The Flash opened below projections and became one of the more discussed box office disappointments of the summer despite a reception that was bafflingly more positive than its performance suggested. Both films arrived in the complicated space between the old DCEU and James Gunn's announced relaunch, positioned as potential final entries in a continuity the studio was publicly moving away from, which is not an ideal context in which to ask audiences to invest. Blue Beetle arrives in the same liminal space and handles it with a confidence and a clarity of purpose that neither of its predecessors managed. It is (probably, pending Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom) the best DC film of the year and one of the more genuinely enjoyable superhero origin stories the genre has produced in the post-Endgame era.
Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) is a recent college graduate returning to his family in Palmera City with an expensive degree and no immediate prospects, arriving home to find the family in financial distress and facing displacement from their home. Through a connection with Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), daughter of the founder of Kord Industries, Jaime comes into possession of a mysterious alien scarab that bonds with his body and transforms him into the armored superhero Blue Beetle, whether he wants it to or not. Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon), the Kord Industries CEO who has been pursuing the scarab to weaponize it, immediately becomes his antagonist. George Lopez, Belissa Escobedo, Adriana Barraza, Harvey Guillén, and Raoul Trujillo also star as members of the Reyes family, with the scarab itself voiced by Becky G.
The Reyes family is the film's most significant creative achievement and the element that most clearly distinguishes it from the crowded superhero field. Each member has a distinct comic and dramatic identity that extends beyond their functional role in the plot: Rudy (Lopez) operates as levity but is given enough heart that his funnier moments land because you have been given a reason to care about him rather than simply being invited to laugh at him. Milagro (Escobedo) has a scene in the film's second half that arrives with emotional force precisely because the film has spent time making her a person rather than a supporting role. The grandmother (Barraza) is the ensemble's warmest presence and the source of the film's most direct statement about the cultural specificity the production is drawing on. The family's collective acceptance of Jenny is handled with the specificity of people who have their own opinions and relationships rather than as a plot convenience.
Maridueña carries the lead with a confidence that makes the transition from Cobra Kai's Miguel Diaz to a theatrical superhero lead look as natural as it should. The scarab's commentary on its own actions, delivered via Becky G's voice work, generates a consistent comic energy that keeps the film from the earnestness that sinks many origin stories, and the dynamic between Jaime and the scarab has the quality of an involuntary partnership that the film uses well without overworking.
The third act, in which the conflict resolves to a direct physical confrontation between Blue Beetle and a villain with a comparable power set, is the film's weakest section and the most predictable. Carapax's motivations are underdeveloped in a way that limits the emotional stakes of their showdown, and the sequence runs longer than the narrative has earned. These are the genre's default failure modes, and Blue Beetle falls into them with enough style that the disappointment is muted rather than acute.
The decision to move Blue Beetle from a streaming release to a theatrical one was correct, and the film's performance, while not the hit Warner Brothers needed, reflected audience goodwill rather than indifference. The DCEU could have used more films made with this level of care for its characters. Hopefully Gunn's new universe finds room for the Reyes family.
